Glenwood Pupils Become Young Food Entrepreneurs

A group of S2 & S3 Home Economics students from Glenwood High School have been working within Keep Scotland Beautiful’s Young Food Entrepreneurs project to explore local food businesses, sustainable food production and find out about skills required within the food production industry.

Young Food Entrepreneurs is funded by the Scottish Government and supports the development of Scotland as a Good Food Nation. The 20 students explored their own local food networks and reflected on the sustainability of their own food choices through different activities. Students discussed the choices made by farmers regarding how they grow food and different models of food production and processing.

Glenwood’s students hosted Bryde and Nat from Falkland Kitchen Farm who are in their third year of production. They helped the students to understand the wide range of skills they have had to develop since embarking on their farming careers through the Falkland Estate’s New Farmer Scheme. To further develop their work with Learning for Sustainability the department are also hoping to visit Falkland Kitchen Farm in the future to see Bryde and Nat’s work in action.

Within the project students are working towards planning and hosting a One Planet Picnic to demonstrated their enterprise skills. This will be a practical application of what they have learned in the project as they will be using sustainable ingredients e.g. seasonal, local, organic, or ethical produce and reducing packaging and food waste.

In preparation for the decisions they will have to take when planning for their One Planet Picnic the students simulated the decisions their school canteen can make to improve the sustainability of their products. Students asked some interesting questions in discussion and felt that the following factors were important to them:

“…knowing where our food comes from…”

“…quality is much better than price…”

“…what the effects would be of the different factors…”

“…it doesn’t need to look good to taste good…”

The students have shown interest and engagement in the project throughout and have been a credit to both Glenwood school and the Home Economics department.

For more information on Young Food Entrepreneurs please visit our website. To express an interest in future offerings of this project for your school or local authority, send an email stating Young Food Entrepreneurs in the subject line confirming your contact details to food@keepscotlandbeautiful.org.